Below is a book excerpt that touches on some ideas of where things can go wrong between parent and child. It sums up a lot of how I've trudged through my understanding of what happened in my life.

Confusion is so fucking boring, and yet it slowly has become a way of life for me. I find that it takes a lot of effort to simply know how I feel sometimes. Working through it is like walking through a daily labyrinth of walls lined with humiliation. I feel like I don't understand who I am to others.

Unfortunately, covert incest is not graphic enough to spell out to others. If only the dynamics were simple enough, based on clear events. Sadly, it seems that the very relationships that my life was based on had undercurrents of strangely communicated feelings. Nonetheless, when the words are missing, pictures of what happened and where the feelings went help a lot.

Here is the excerpt:

In his long suppressed, extraordinary final paper, “Confusion of Tongues” (Ferenczi, 1933/ 1980), Ferenczi did much more than point to adult sexualization of children, rather than infantile sexuality and fantasy, as a cause of serious psychological damage the child carries into adulthood. Ferenczi went further, identifying the complex, cumulative emotional trauma the child who is neglected and/ or abused experiences in the context of the developmental relationship. He went on to describe how parents project their disavowed guilt (and shame) on to the child; and how resentful they were, no matter how well masked, of the child's dependence on them— because of their own disavowed wishes to be the focus of attention and care. He recognized that such parents dissociatively take advantage of the child's instinctive willingness to “introject” the guilt and shame the parent disavows. The child, Ferenczi understood, does this by becoming self-blaming, self-loathing, and self-sacrificing. He becomes the caretaker of the parent, while dissociating the awareness of his own needs, along with his concomitant grief and rage about feeling abandoned and exploited…. The confusion of tongues Ferenczi observed, when the boundaries differentiating adult passion from childhood tenderness are violated by adult caregivers, is one of the grossest possible examples of parental narcissism. Aside from understanding the profoundly confusing, exciting, humiliating, and terrifying feelings of the child who is sexually abused by an adult, Ferenczi points to another layer of trauma involved in such violations: the utter failure of the parent to recognize who his child actually is and what the child actually needs. Instead, the child is sexualized and told that it is she, the child, who has caused the sexualization. This catastrophic misrecognition and misattribution is an extremely destructive and cruel rejection and betrayal of the actual child— the child whose links to her own subjectivity are being destroyed, and replaced by the projections of the abuser.

I'm curious if this makes sense to anyone else. If not, that's okay too. Like I said, I'm used to feeling confused.

The excerpt is quite simply, me. My damage was done from 0-4. My mother systematically tortured me into submission. I always knew she hated me, even while telling me how much she loved me. I knew she hated all her children. At 64 I am having a very difficult time finding a ME inside. Subjectivity is elusive. I make unhealthy choice after unhealthy choice. At least I am becoming conscious of my unhealthy choices and I do learn. Posts like yours are invaluable in helping me understand myself. I am grateful for MS.

Thanks,

Don

_________________________
Divine Law is not judgment or denial of self truths. Divine Law is honoring harmony that comes from a peaceful mind, an open heart, a true tongue, a light step, a forgiving nature, and a love of all living creatures. Jamie Sams & David Carson, Medicine Cards

You summed it up well: the irony of looking for the simple truth in situations and circumstances that at first present an overwhelming complexity. While I find confusion boring, I also find getting through it makes me truly happy and reminds me of who I am. I can do all kinds of things in a state of confusion, most of which I am not proud of. But then that is the nature of survival.

Yes, the area between verbal and non-verbal is good to explore. Many of the difficult experiences began during stages of development when we didn’t have words. When I do discover something, I like to find words that describe it. It feels important to do that because it helps me recognize when feelings are being “disavowed’, as the passage mentions. These days I want to know who’s feeling what around me. I want to know what I’m feeling and what another person is feeling. It helps me feel safe. Perhaps this is the legacy of the damage. Doing something about it calms me down and helps me get back to the present moment.

I think what caught my eye most of all about the passage was the lack of differentiation between “adult passion” and “childhood tenderness”. Especially now that I have children, I feel the need to make this difference clear but often lack the means. This probably reflects the fact that I was in the midst of adult passion as a child. When I actually think about it, I would say that like confusion, I find tenderness initially boring. It simply has not been on my emotional map. I feel kind of sick inside for saying that. In raising my kids I see the need to have that kind of connection with them and I treasure it whenever it occurs. What it could mean to me personally is still a painful thing to consider.

Thanks for your response. It helps me move some of this along. Please take care of yourself.

Jacob S

The book is called Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation by Daniel Shaw. It's slow-going but full of helpful insights.

Don

The learning process ain’t fun. I feel like I lived outside of any experiences of subjectivity between myself and others for too long. I'm angry for having made myself numb and look forward to making better choices.

As you might gather from my moniker, bodywork has also been part of my process of opening up and letting go. Repressed memories felt in my body ache for recognition, but I have to take it a day at at time and remind myself that healing is possible when the pain and confusion set in.

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